


Cupid painted blind

by renecdote



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domesticity, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Some Fluff, Some angst, Some guys being bad at feelings, forced to live together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25965460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: Chin Ho Kelly, brilliant detective that he was, was the one to figure out that Steve was the common denominator, but it was Kono who first suggested magic.“I have a friend whose cousin tried a marriage spell once,” she said. “It was just supposed to make a girl fall in love with her, but she messed it up, ended up linking their hearts together. It looked a little bit like this.”“A spell,” Danny repeated incredulously. “Like an actual magical spell?”Steve and Danny get magically bound together. The resulting we-have-to-live-together-so-we-don’t-die leads some unexpected places.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 40
Kudos: 239
Collections: H50 Big Bang 2020





	Cupid painted blind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the H50 Big Bang 2020. The wonderful art attached is by angels-c.
> 
> This is set vaguely post 5x17 with reference to some events in and before that episode but nothing after. Special thanks to pterawaters for beta-ing and everyone in the discord server for all the word sprints and cheerleading. You guys made this event so much fun to be part of <3
> 
> The title is taken from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: _Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind._

There was a disorienting moment after Danny opened his eyes when he didn’t remember where he was. The ceiling above him wasn’t quite white enough, the room was just a little too bright, and he’d been having the strangest dream about surfing. Then he rolled over on the mattress-that-was-a-bit-too-firm and saw the empty sheets thrown back beside him and his brain jolted into fast forward. Steve’s house; Steve’s bed; Steve’s empty sheets.

“Fuck,” Danny groaned into the pillow.

Steve was downstairs somewhere. Danny could hear the faint murmur of voices and the occasional clatter from what was probably the kitchen. A part of Danny had really been hoping that they would just wake up and the horrible nightmare of a day they had yesterday would be little more than that—a nightmare. But if Steve was downstairs instead of out running marathons or swimming more miles than Danny could count before coffee, then odds were their situation had not magically improved overnight.

Magically. Danny almost laughed. Magic—which was apparently real, so he could jot that down as the first _what the fuck_ of the week—was what got them into this situation in the first place.

Yesterday had started simple. Or—no, he had to go further back than that. Sunday morning had dawned bright and mockingly cheerful; mockingly because Danny had only been up for an hour before he was called into work. There were three missing girls, all in the last forty-eight hours; two of them cousins on their way home from a late-night study session together, no apparent connection to the third. It was the kind of case Danny hated on principle because there were kids involved. 

There were two days of dead ends and hardly any sleep until finally, _finally_ , they got a tip yesterday morning about a rundown house located about as close to the middle of nowhere as you could get on an island, a van the same model and colour as the one their kidnappers were reportedly driving seen parked outside. What that tip had neglected to mention was that the not-so-abandoned house was being used by a cult, and when Steve and Danny burst through the front door they were walking right into some kind of ritual. Which, okay, there hadn’t been a problem at first, the whole thing had gone down like any other bust, the bad guys all corralled and handcuffed and handed over to HPD. They searched the property, found their girls and half a dozen more in the basement, scared and hungry but otherwise alright. Case closed. Job well done.

It wasn’t until later that things started getting… weird. 

Weird like sudden chest pain, feeling like he couldn't breathe, a wave of skin-crawling, stomach-churning anxiety that felt like it was bombarding him from outside as well as swirling up from within. Danny collapsed two steps out of the palace, Chin’s shout of alarm at his side sounding distant under the sudden buzzing in his ears. He still wasn't sure whether someone had gone to get Steve or Steve had just known to come running out on his own, but the relief when his partner knelt at his side and grabbed his hand had been instant. Instant enough that by the time the EMTs arrived, Danny had been fine. Perfectly, inexplicably fine.

They’d taken him to the hospital for a bunch of tests anyway. Shrugged and shaken their heads and told him it was probably just anxiety, but come back if it happened again.

Which it did. Twice. And Chin Ho Kelly, brilliant detective that he was, was the one to figure out that Steve was the common denominator, but it was Kono who first suggested magic.

“I have a friend whose cousin tried a marriage spell once,” she said. “It was just supposed to make a girl fall in love with her, but she messed it up, ended up linking their hearts together. It looked a little bit like this.” 

“A spell,” Danny repeated incredulously. “Like an actual magical spell?”

Lou, Danny was relieved to see, had been just as skeptical. It gave Danny someone to exchange _can you fucking believe this nonsense?_ looks with across the meeting table they’d all gathered around.

Steve had just nodded, brow creased the way it did when he was thinking too hard about something. He skipped all freak-outs about magic being real and jumped right to, “What happened to your cousin? Did she manage to reverse the spell?”

Kono grimaced, trading a look with Chin. “No,” was all she said, but Danny could read between the lines. He didn’t have to think too hard to come up with all the ways that linking your heart to another person might end badly.

“Right.” He swallowed. “Right, okay, so we should stay close together until we get this fixed.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

So here Danny was, waking up in Steve McGarrett’s house—in his _bed—_ because of _magic._ How the fuck even was this his life.

***

Chin and Kono were both downstairs when Danny finally convinced himself to get up and face the day. They were settled so deeply into their seats on the lanai that they had probably been there a while. Long enough, at least, for the first round of coffee to go cold. Steve, either because he knew Danny so well or because he was avoiding him (as much as he could, anyway), headed into the kitchen to make a fresh pot as soon as he saw Danny coming through the dining room. For a second, just a second, they were close enough that their arms brushed moving through the doorway; and then Steve disappeared into the house leaving Danny alone with the cousins.

“Please tell me you’re here because you’ve figured out how to fix this,” was first thing out of his mouth. It was uncomfortably close to begging but he didn’t care. They could not live their lives tied together like this. They just couldn’t. Danny was supposed to have Grace this weekend and if they didn’t have this fixed by then there would have to be explanations. Explanations about why they were staying at Uncle Steve’s house and why he was sleeping in Uncle Steve’s bed; and those explanations would no doubt be passed along to Rachel and that—that was something Danny did not need in his life.

So Danny’s soul was crushed, just the tiniest bit, when Chin shook his head. “Sorry brah, nothing yet.”

Danny felt more than justified in burying his head in his arms with a groan. Kono patted his back consolingly.

“Look on the bright side, Danny,” she tried, “At least you’ll have an easier time keeping the boss out of trouble.”

Bright side. Right. More likely Steve would just drag Danny into trouble with him. Which wasn’t that different to how things usually went, except this time Danny really, honestly wouldn’t have the option to say no.

Did he mention he hated his life?

“We think…” Chin’s tone was a little more cautious now, which was enough to make Danny instantly wary. “We think it would be better if you two stayed out of the office until we get this sorted. Just in case.”

Just in case they caught a case, he meant. Or, more likely, just in case Steve pulled one of his usual ridiculous stunts and accidentally ended up getting them both killed.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Danny agreed, albeit a little reluctantly. The office would mean distraction, other people, at the very least a steady supply of coffee. It would mean _normal_ , or a pretense of it anyway since nothing would really feel normal as long he could feel Steve like a prickle beneath his skin. He couldn’t help glancing back in the direction of said prickle. “I bet he took that suggestion well.”

Chin’s wince was barely noticeable, invisible to anyone who didn’t know him as well as they all knew each other. “Not so much,” he agreed.

“Great,” Danny sighed.

“Just try not to kill each other,” Kono offered, far too cheerfully. She was joking. Probably.

“Easier said than done,” Danny muttered.

Kono just laughed. 

***

All things considered, the first day wasn’t too bad. Steve went out to bang around in the garage and Danny ignored the strange pull in his chest, _could_ ignore it, like it was just the dull burn of a twinged muscle. He caught himself rubbing it a few times; and that was just like having a pulled muscle too, except no amount of massaging it made the ache go away. It was only when Steve stepped back into the house, sweaty and grease-stained, the furrow between his brows only looking deeper for the hours he had spent inside his own head, that the knot in Danny’s chest unravelled.

“Hey,” he said, tossing aside the book he’d been reading. (H.G. Wells: _War of the Worlds_. Danny still hadn’t figured out whether Steve was a closet sci-fi nerd or if it had belonged to his dad.) “You want lunch?”

He got a distracted look in response before Steve turned toward the stairs. “There’s food in the kitchen, help yourself.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Danny called after him, but Steve was already disappearing into the bedroom. The way the door shut behind him wasn’t loud but it felt pointed anyway.

Danny sighed. He should have been expecting this, really. Steve shutting Danny out, shutting in on himself; it was his modus operandi whenever something went wrong.

Danny just thought it would take longer than a day.

***

When the doorbell rang a little after three, Danny was quick to answer it, maybe a little desperate for any human interaction that didn’t involve his grouchy partner. He blinked in surprise when he found Jerry and a banker’s box on the other side.

“Chin asked me to do some research,” Jerry explained, setting his box down on the coffee table and pulling out a handful of files. “Where’s McGarrett?”

Before Danny could answer, Steve appeared like magic—hah—from whatever corner of the house he’d disappeared to. “I’m right here,” he said. “What’s all this?”

The files were forming a haphazard stack on the table, only a couple of inches high. Two books were pulled out and thunked on top. “This is everything I could find about binding magic.”

It didn’t look like much.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Steve said.

Danny glanced at him, wondering whether Steve had literally read his mind. Could the link do that? No. No, he didn’t think so. Not that they needed magic; they’d always been in tune with each other, on the same wavelength when it came to cases if not anything else.

Jerry shrugged. “I can probably dig up more with some time but I thought you’d want this right away.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Jer,” Steve said, already picking up a file and flicking through it. Danny picked up another one and found it full of crime scene photos and CSU reports on the contents of the house they had raided.

“You know,” Jerry said, with the tone of someone imparting casual knowledge that nobody else would think was casual. “The main two reasons for binding spells was to make someone fall in love with you or get revenge.”

Danny and Steve looked at each other. Danny’s mind was spinning through a dozen possible responses to the love angle of that statement, but Steve—proving that just as often as they were on the same wavelength, they were likely to be so far off the same page they might as well not be in the same book—just asked, “You think this was revenge for something? That we were deliberately targeted?”

The question was directed at Jerry, but Danny shook his head. “No. No way. You saw their faces when we burst in there, they definitely weren’t expecting us.”

Which left them with the love reason. Not that Danny was going to say that. Steve obviously got it though because he was looking at Danny in a new way. Focused, but a little distant, like the focus wasn’t actually Danny, just the puzzle piece he represented in this mess of a case. It was a look Danny wasn’t entirely comfortable with and he turned away, back to the glossy photos of dried herbs and apothecary-style glass bottles and—were those bones in that jar? He squinted at the picture.

“We’ll go through all of this,” Steve was telling Jerry. “Let us know if you find anything else, okay?”

“Right. Of course.” Jerry looked between them. “I’ll just… leave you to it then.”

There was silence after the door shut behind him. Danny, of course, was the one to break it. He waved the folder he was holding through the air, careful not to let the papers scatter everywhere.

“This is crazy.” It bore repeating: “This is fucking crazy. You get that, right? This is like something out of a fairytale.”

“Fairytales aren’t real.”

“Neither is magic!”

Steve cast him a look. It was the kind of look Danny was used to receiving when he talked about the wonders of New Jersey, or the joys of sleeping in on a weekend, or other normal, human things like letting your partner drive his own car. The kind of look that meant Steve wasn’t quite sure he was serious. 

“Clearly it is,” he pointed out.

Clearly, Danny thought bitterly. At least if this was a fairytale he could just kiss his prince charming and be pretty confident the spell would break. 

He stopped that thought right in its tracks. No way was Steve the prince charming in this situation. 

But damned if it wouldn’t be simpler if life worked like a Disney movie.

***

Night brought a new dilemma. Last night they had been so exhausted and—Danny, at least—frazzled by the seems-like-you’re-magically-connected bombshell that they hadn’t even discussed sleeping arrangements, just fallen into opposite sides of Steve’s bed and not talked about it.

But after eating pizza and downing a six pack of beer, half-watching the replay of a game on TV, pretending that this was just a normal night, the kind they’d had a hundred times when hanging out before, Steve said, “I, uh, I made up the guest bed earlier.”

They had a better idea of the length of their tether now and the two doors between them wouldn’t be fun but it wouldn't kill them either.

“Okay,” Danny nodded. “Thanks.”

He took his time showering, just because he knew it would drive Steve crazy, then dug pyjama pants and an old t-shirt out of the bag he had hastily packed when they swung by his place the night before. He brushed his teeth and lay down between the cool, clean sheets, taking a moment to hope that maybe he would wake up tomorrow and it really would all have been some strange, vivid nightmare. Then he closed his eyes, determined to sleep. 

But sleep wouldn’t come.

Danny tossed and turned, growing more irritable with every sleepless minute. It wasn’t that the bed wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t even that there was no TV to provide background noise. It was just that his brain wouldn’t shut up. There were too many thoughts clamouring, tangling together, keeping him wide awake and alert. And that Steve-itch beneath his skin wouldn't fucking go away, not even when Danny dug blunt nails into his skin, scratching at the most annoying itch in his chest. It wasn’t really an itch, of course, and he didn’t honestly think scratching at it would work, but come on; _something_ had to bring some relief.

 _Fuck it,_ Danny thought, and he threw the covers off. The floorboards right outside the guest room creaked when he stepped on them and he winced, feeling all of ten years old for a moment, creeping around the house late at night when he was supposed to be sleeping. The doorknob for Steve’s room was cold under his palm as he eased the door open, not giving himself time to second guess what he was doing as he slipped instead and closed it just as quietly behind himself.

He paused a moment then, figuring out the best approach. Steve was sprawled on his stomach, one arm up under the pillow, the long line of his body loose and relaxed. There was just enough room for Danny to crawl in on the left side. He usually slept on the right, but whatever, beggars couldn’t be choosers and all that. Without giving himself another moment to second guess this whole situation, he lifted up the covers and slid into the bed.

Steve’s head came up, unerringly turned toward him. “Danny?” His voice was a little rough, but not slurred the way it would be if he’d really been sleeping. “You okay?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Danny said shortly. He settled on his back, staring up at the ceiling, then after a moment rolled onto his side so he could look at Steve in the faint moonlight breaking through the window. “Why doesn’t this seem to be affecting you as bad huh? What deity did I piss off to turn into a fainting daisy every time my partner leaves the room but you’re your usual superhuman self?”

Steve wouldn’t meet his eyes. He turned his head away, further into his pillow.

 _Fucking hell_ , Danny thought. “It is just as bad for you, isn’t it? Christ, Steven, why the hell didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you—”

“What was I supposed to say?” Steve cut in, low and cold the way he never got when they argued. “That I felt like I was one wrong breath away from a panic attack every time you walked out of the room? That when you collapsed outside HQ I almost couldn’t get to you because I couldn’t think through the sudden blinding pain? That I thought I was going fucking crazy?”

 _Yes_ , Danny wanted to scream, _yes you should have said all of that!_ He clamped down on it, not because it didn’t need to be said, but because the words were sure to unleash a whole flood of _who fucked you up so bad you can’t even acknowledge emotions like a normal human being_ , and if he said that there was a fifty-fifty chance Steve would get up and walk away right then, magical consequences be damned. The moment they’d had in Agnes Miller’s apartment just a few weeks ago felt like a distant memory.

Danny took a deep breath. “I thought we agreed that you could talk to me about this kind of stuff. About your thoughts and feelings and… I know this situation is a little unusual, but…”

If he listened hard, he could hear Steve’s breathing; quiet and even in the darkness.

“You don’t want to be here.”

Danny frowned at the non sequitur. “What?”

“This whole situation is—it sucks, Danny. You’re stuck here, you’re stuck with me, and knowing how much it was getting to me too wasn’t going to do anything to help.”

“You’re an idiot.” It came out fierce; furious. “I’m serious, Steven, you’re a fucking idiot if you think I don’t care how you’re feeling. I literally can’t not care at the moment, what with the whole mi emotions es tu emotions and all that—but if you think for one second that that is the only reason I care—” Danny shook his head. Their therapist would probably love this, he thought sourly.

Steve was staring at him now, a little wide-eyed. “You can feel what I’m feeling?”

It ground Danny’s building rant to a halt.

“Oh. You didn’t know.”

Steve was mute.

“You can’t feel mine?” Danny asked, curious. It seemed odd that it would only work one way, but what did he know? It was magic, for god’s sake, if there were any rules they weren’t ones he could even begin to guess at. 

“I don’t know,” Steve said eventually. His voice was more focused, clinical, the way it got when he was pulling apart the details of a case. “It’s more… in my head. Like there are too many thoughts and most of them don’t make sense, and I know they don’t make sense but I can’t turn them off.”

 _Like anxiety_ , Danny thought. He didn’t say it out loud. But he couldn’t help saying, “This is hell for you, isn’t?”

He didn’t really have to ask; he already knew that it was. Steve and sharing emotions did not go well together. Steve and sharing emotions he didn’t even mean to share? He had probably endured literal torture that was more enjoyable.

Not that this was a piece of cake for Danny, mind. He may have worn his heart on his sleeve all his life but that didn’t mean that he was happy having the decision to share his feelings taken away from him.

“Are you going to mock me, if I say I don’t like feeling like I’m not in control?” Steve asked.

Danny’s next breath felt heavy, his heart squeezed tight, but it wasn’t because of magic. He found Steve’s arm amongst the sheets and squeezed. “No, babe, I’m not going to mock you.”

_Not when I feel exactly the same way._

***

It had been one day and Danny was already starting to see why house arrest was a punishment. He loved a day when he didn’t have to go out—didn’t have to grocery shop or socialise or even change out of his pyjamas if he didn’t want to—but as soon as the option of going somewhere was taken out of his control, he felt like a caged animal. He was sure this must be what monkeys at the zoo felt like, or the dolphins kept in those pools for tourists. One minute they had the whole ocean to explore, the next they were swimming circles around the same two thousand square foot pool every day.

It wasn’t like he couldn’t go out at all, but it had to be a joint decision, a mutual outing, and Steve had buried himself in Jerry’s research with no sign that he planned to move until he found a solution to their problem.

Don’t get Danny wrong, he was behind finding a solution one hundred percent; he wanted out of this mess as much as Steve did. It was just that, unlike Steve, Danny’s vision was swimming and his head was aching after two hours of squinting at the small print in one of Jerry’s books. He dropped it with a sigh; useless thing hadn’t given him anything helpful anyway.

“I’m taking a break.”

Steve made a vague sound of acknowledgement but didn’t look up. After the outpouring of words last night, they were back to avoidance and short responses. Half of it was tunnel-vision focus on finding a way to break the curse, yeah, but it was also Steve putting up walls. There was room for another joke about their therapist, maybe, but honestly this whole fucked up situation was either going to be really good for their relationship or extremely bad.

Danny wandered into the kitchen, thinking that more coffee could only help. It was while he was staring vaguely at the magnetic calendar on Steve's fridge, waiting for the coffee to be ready, that he realised what exactly the date was.

“Fuck,” he said aloud. He was supposed to have Grace tomorrow night. He hadn’t really forgotten, his little girl was always there in the back of his mind, but with everything going on he’d lost track of just how fast the weekend was creeping up. 

The coffee was forgotten; instead he pulled out his phone. Calling Rachel to say that something came up and he needed to reschedule his weekend with Grace sucked as much as he knew it would. Losing a weekend with his daughter was always painful, but losing it so last minute hurt even more. And maybe it should have motivated him to find a way to fix this, but it just put him in even less of a mood to go back to the research.

Fucking magic. He may have only just learnt that it really existed but it was quickly becoming his least favourite thing in the world. Danny reigned in the urge to punch the wall. What he needed was a distraction. Or—food. It was close enough to lunch time and he was already in the kitchen anyway. 

But a quick look through Steve’s cupboards and fridge revealed sparse offerings. Some canned vegetables; rice; a few other pantry staples; half a block of goat’s cheese; a quart of pineapple juice (yuck); strawberry jam; his weird grass butter; and not much else. He’d used the last of the bread yesterday, slapped on some PB&J without much consideration of what was there. Danny resisted the urge to bang his head against the fridge door. He let it slam shut instead and marched back into the dining room.

“We need to go grocery shopping.”

Steve had a pen caught between his teeth. “What?” he asked, distracted. 

“Grocery shopping,” Danny repeated. “Unless you want to live off takeout for as long as we’re stuck here?”

Steve made a face. It was hard to tell whether it was at the reminder that they were stuck there or the thought of eating nothing but takeout for however long it lasted. “I was going to do shopping yesterday,” he said, frowning like he’d only just remembered. 

“Well now we’re doing it today.” Danny turned away, looking for where he’d left his shoes. “Come on, leave all that, we’ll still be stuck here when we get back.”

_Unfortunately._

***

The grocery shopping, at least, was not as painful as Danny expected. Steve wrote a list in neat black print and only protested the first few times that Danny went off-list to add random items to the cart. They worked seamlessly to unpack the groceries when they got back and it felt so normal, so easy, to be moving around Steve in the kitchen, doing something as domestic as putting away groceries. It must have felt that way for Steve too because when Danny stopped suddenly with a box of cereal in his hand, Steve didn’t even complain; he just brushed a hand over Danny’s hip as he moved past to reach the fridge, seemingly without realising he’d done it. And the reason that Danny was frozen, the thing that had rooted his feet to the floor and made his chest flutter strangely, was that he could look at this scene from the outside and see himself and Rachel back when they’d just gotten married, happy and blissful and so used to being in each other’s space that they didn’t even have to think about it.

Danny had to escape for a moment after that; take himself upstairs and lean against a wall until he could stop thinking.

He couldn’t stop feeling it though.

***

“You have Grace this weekend,” Steve opened with over dinner.

Five years ago it might have been a surprise that Steve kept track of his custody schedule. These days, it was just one of those things that Danny expected. The sky was blue, coco puffs were divine, and Steve knew what weekends Danno had his monkey.

“I already called Rachel to reschedule,” he said, the words sad and bitter in his mouth.

“Why?”

Danny gave him an incredulous look. “Babe.”

“Right.” Steve frowned down at his rice. It wasn’t his puzzling out a clue frown or even his _I know how to kill you with only my pinky and don’t think I won’t do it if you test me_ frown. It was a genuinely unhappy frown. Danny felt curdling misery in his stomach and he honestly wasn’t sure whether it belonged to him or Steve.

“It’s fine,” he said, even though it felt anything but. “I’ll just get her next weekend instead.”

“Unless we don’t fix this.”

It was true, but Steve didn’t have to say it. Danny stabbed at his food a little more aggressively than necessary. He didn’t want to think about how long this might last. He changed the subject instead; and Steve let him. It was easier to talk about the weather or what terrible movies were on TV or any other inane, non-Grace-related, non-work-related topic they could come up with. And then they went and watched one of those terrible movies and it was even easier to pretend that it was a real distraction, even if it only lasted an hour and a half.

But when they went to bed that night, Danny only hesitated a moment at the top of the stairs before following Steve into his bedroom. 

***

The dream felt familiar, which was strange because Danny was sure he’d never had it before. He was lying on his stomach in a jungle, watching the crawl of people moving through a camp. Half of them had guns and dark green uniforms. Military? As soon as he thought it he knew the answer was no, although he wasn’t sure how he knew that.

“I’ve got eyes on the target. Two o’clock,” a voice said beside him.

Danny’s gaze swung the way it was directed, picking out the one person dressed like they didn’t belong there. Dress pants and a dark purple shirt and a face that was vaguely familiar. Panic was creeping up his spine but he wasn’t sure why; there was nothing wrong. Nobody had spotted them, nobody was shooting. He and his partner moved like wraiths through the trees, slipping silently into the camp and coming up behind their target before he could spot them. It was easy (too easy) to throw a hood over the man’s head and tie his arms behind his back.

“Don’t make a sound,” Danny hissed beside a hood-covered ear. His heart was starting to pound, the panic blossoming and spreading like toxic weeds. It was like watching a horror movie for the first time, knowing something was going to go wrong but not knowing what or when.

They ducked and weaved from one place of cover to another. Danny’s heart thudded painfully. They were almost there. They were almost—

“Americans!” their hostage shouted and just like that—chaos. A burst of gunfire, shouts, no clear exits.

His partner grunted, went down, struggled to his feet just to go down again.

“Freddie!”

The scream tore from his throat. Danny was pressing his hands over welling blood before it caught up to him. Freddie?

Oh shit, Freddie. 

It wasn’t Freddie Hart’s face staring back at him anymore though. Danny had only seen this face in pictures—crime scene shots and framed family photos—but the way he knew that this was John McGarrett was a bone-deep, gut-wrenching feeling. It was sharp and painful and Danny couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn't understand. All he could do was mutter a panicked litany of “no, no, no” under his breath as he tried hopelessly to stop the bleeding.

“You should…” John was gasping, blood on his lips, but he grabbed Danny by the front of his shirt, eyes bright with pain. “You should have given him what he wanted, Steve. Shouldn’t have let him… let him kill me.”

“What?” Danny was saying. And, “Dad, I didn’t—”

Dad?

It was sinking in. This wasn’t his memory, and John McGarrett had called him Steve, and he was wearing blood-stained camo, and—

***

He woke with a choked gasp to find hands on his shoulders. Steve didn’t look like his father, not really, but for a moment the eyes staring back at Danny were too familiar. He pulled back, tried to twist away, and only the hand Steve clamped around his arm stopped him from falling out of bed.

“Fuck.” It came out just shy of a sob. Danny pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes so hard he saw stars. “Fucking hell, is that the kind of shit you go through every night?”

Now that Danny was awake and not falling out of bed, Steve had put some distance between them. It was the kind of distance that felt more than just physical, like he was closing in on himself, shutting Danny out.

“It’s not every night.”

Something in Steve’s voice—or, no, something that wasn’t there, some blankness that made Danny shiver, it gave him the impression that most nights were actually worse.

 _Fucking hell_ , Danny thought again.

“C’mere.” Steve didn’t move and Danny made a frustrated sound, waving his hand impatiently. “Come here, you goof, I’m gonna give you a hug. I need to give you a hug.”

Steve was stiff and unmoving but he let Danny hug him. Danny just kept holding on until he felt a shuddering breath and then Steve was relaxing against him, tense one minute and boneless the next. He didn’t hug back, but he turned toward Danny a little bit, slouched low enough that his head rested on Danny’s shoulder. It didn’t look comfortable, but Danny wasn’t going to be the first to let go.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “We’ll figure this out. This magic thing—we’ll find out what exactly happened and we’ll get it fixed.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, but it rang a little hollow.

Danny didn’t know what else to say. He’d always had a reservoir of words, never had a problem talking, but words didn’t fix his marriage with Rachel and they sure as hell couldn’t fix this.

(He didn’t stop to think about why it felt so natural for this and his marriage to fit neatly in the same sentence. If he stopped to think about it, he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it, and nothing good could come of that. It was probably just the binding spell. Just the magic. That’s all it was.)

***

Danny was surprised not to wake up alone the next morning. Steve was awake beside him, sitting up, poking at his phone, probably playing some game he’d never admit to having on there. Danny took a moment just to look up at his partner. Steve was dressed, which meant he’d gotten up, maybe even thought about going downstairs. Or—no, there were two mugs of coffee on the nightstand beside him, so he had gone downstairs. But then he’d come back. Huh.

“Good morning.”

Steve didn’t look away from his phone as he said it, which meant he’d probably been aware that Danny was waking up before Danny was himself.

“Morning,” Danny grunted. Then, “Coffee?”

A mug was pressed into his hands. Danny happily breathed in the steam before he took a sip. Steve was watching him now, an amused slant to his mouth. 

“What?” Danny asked. He automatically reached a hand up to pat at his hair, sure it must be a wild mess.

“Nothing,” Steve said quickly. And before Danny could press him, he went on, “We should go through the material Jerry brought over again today. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something before we need to pick Grace up from school this afternoon.”

What?

Danny shook his head. “We talked about this. I already told Rachel I couldn’t have her this weekend.”

Steve was undeterred. “I spoke to Rachel. Told her that the work thing that came up wasn’t a problem anymore.”

Danny wanted to poke at that a little more, dissect what exactly _wasn’t a problem anymore_ really meant. But to his sleep-slow mind, the more important thing seemed to be, “You spoke to Rachel?”

Steve just raised an eyebrow, like he didn’t understand why Danny was surprised. Danny sighed. Yeah, he didn’t know why he was surprised either. This was the same man who used his relationship with the governor to stop Danny losing custody of Grace back when they’d only known each other for a month.

“She’s your daughter.” Steve wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I know how important your weekends are.”

 _And I didn’t want to be the reason you didn’t get to see her_ went unsaid, but Danny heard it anyway.

“Thank you,” he said. Steve shrugged, like it was no big deal. Danny nudged him with his elbow, careful not to spill his coffee as he did. “I mean it. Thank you.”

Steve’s eyes swept over him this time, serious in their intensity. He nodded. “You’re welcome.”

***

Grace was like a breath of fresh air. She was as thrilled to see Uncle Steve waiting for her outside the school as she was to see Danny. (Danny was only a tiny bit jealous that she hugged Steve first; mostly it made him feel a rush of warmth, and he was pretty sure only a part of that feeling was Steve’s reaction to the small arms flung around his chest.) She was even more excited when told that they would be spending the weekend at Uncle Steve’s house.

“You can help me with my science homework,” she told him brightly. “And we can go swimming!”

Danny couldn’t say no to his daughter. He couldn’t say no to Steve either, apparently, whose eagerness at the thought of getting in the water was a physical thing in Danny’s chest. Not being able to swim a hundred miles every day was probably half the reason this magic bond thing was getting to him so much.

“Fine,” he agreed. “But everyone is putting sunscreen on first—and no going out deep.”

It was fine at first. Sunscreen was applied and waves were splashed in and Danny couldn’t help smiling, watching how happy Grace was with Steve and how equally happy Steve was around Grace. But it didn’t take long for the smile to fall away, for the first tendrils of anxiety to take its place. 

It was stupid. They’d gone swimming here plenty of times in the last four years. He took Grace to the beach all the time. He surfed with Steve in much rougher and deeper waters than this. And Steve was a Navy SEAL, for fuck’s sake, if there was anywhere he could take care of himself, it was in the water. 

But the niggling fear wouldn’t leave him alone. He couldn’t stop thinking about Steve being sucked under by a rip and dragged out to sea; dragged so far out that Danny wouldn’t even be able to think about saving him because he’d be too busy collapsing, probably drowning himself. And Grace, there to watch the whole thing happen, the way that Danny had watched his best friend disappear into the water when he was about her age. 

The irrational panic sunk its claws in and refused to let go. Whether he made some sound or face or any other visible sign, he couldn’t tell; maybe it was just because of their stupid magic bond, but it didn’t take Steve long to notice. He dropped onto the sand next to where Danny was sitting, pushing back his dripping hair, blocking part of the sun as he leaned into Danny’s personal space.

“Danno?” he asked quietly. Worriedly. 

Danny felt choked. He didn’t know what to say. It was stupid; if he said it out loud, Steve would just tell him how stupid it was. Then he would probably roll his eyes and say something like _I’m a Navy SEAL, Danno, I’m not going to drown._

But he didn’t have to say it out loud. He didn't have to say anything. Steve just squeezed his arm and turned to tell Grace it was time to go inside. If it was Danny, she might have argued, but either because it was Steve or because she caught something on their faces, she just waded back to shore and picked up her towel. Then she hesitated, biting her lip, toes curling in the sand in front of them.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything is fine,” Danny was quick to reassure her. It was now, at least. He stood up, brushing ineffectually at the sand that clung to his pants even though he’d been sitting on a towel. “Didn’t you say something about homework?”

Grace sighed. “It’s only a little bit.”

“Then it won’t take you long.”

She glanced at Steve, who was still sitting on the sand looking up at them. The way the sun cast shadows across one side of his face made his eyelashes look ridiculously long and there was a drop of water sliding down his jaw that Danny had to resist the urge to wipe away with his thumb. He tucked his hands into his pockets.

“Can you help me with my questions for science?” Grace asked. “We just started doing chemistry.”

“Yeah, ‘course I will, Gracie,” Steve said. “I’d love to help.”

***

So Steve helped Grace with homework and then they cooked dinner together, all three of them. It was like the groceries all over again: achingly domestic. Danny caught himself rubbing at his chest, but it wasn’t because it hurt. Not physically, at least, not the way that it did when Steve left the kitchen to set the table and Danny felt every second of the distance between them. 

Steve was still pretending not to be affected when they were too far apart, but he was also staying close to Danny more too, so Danny could be generous and not call him out on it. He slung an arm around the back of Danny’s chair when he finished eating, plate scraped clean of lasagne and salad, looking relaxed and content the way he hadn’t in days when Danny glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. Danny was feeling pretty relaxed and content himself, happy to stay in that moment forever if it meant listening to Grace talk about school and the new book she was reading and this “really cool documentary about space that was on TV the other night. Did you know that the moon is actually moving away from Earth’s gravity?”

Danny did not know that. Steve said that he did, but Danny wasn’t sure whether to believe him.

When Steve started to collect their plates, Danny stood up too. “Hey, I’ll do it,” he said, stopping Steve’s hand before he could grab Grace’s cutlery. “You did the dishes last night so it’s my turn, right?”

Steve shrugged. “Sure. Just leave everything in the drying rack, I’ll put it away later.”

As if Danny didn’t know where everything lived in the kitchen. He rolled his eyes. 

Steve and Grace settled on the couch in the living room, their voices right on the edge of Danny’s hearing as he scrubbed at the stubborn bits of cheese clinging to the lasagne dish. He wasn’t really _trying_ to listen in; he just couldn’t help it.

“Uncle Steve?”

“Yeah, Gracie?”

“Do you play guitar?”

Danny went still, found himself holding his breath as he waited for Steve’s answer.

“I used to,” Steve said. “I’m a bit out of practice.”

It didn’t deter Grace. “Can you play me something?” she asked.

“I don’t know…”

“Please?”

Danny could imagine the look that Steve was being treated to; it wasn’t really a surprise when he caved. There was a moment of silence, presumably while Steve retrieved the guitar, and Danny was focused on scrubbing the oven dish again when the sound of strumming filled the house. He didn’t recognise the song, the notes vaguely familiar but not enough to place them, but whatever it was it sounded good. Really good. It made him smile; whatever Steve said about being out of practice, he’d clearly been playing since Danny gave him the guitar. 

They were still bent over the instrument when Danny finished washing and drying (and putting away) the dishes. Grace was clicking away at her laptop, looking up sheet music for various songs and seeing if Steve could play them. There was a little dip of concentration between his brows, but it was nothing like the tension that a hard case put in his shoulders. He was still relaxed; a soft, almost unconscious smile on his face as he played. Danny settled quietly on the couch beside Grace, reluctant to interrupt. 

“Did you know Uncle Steve could play guitar?” she whispered, smiling up at him. 

“Yeah, monkey, I knew,” Danny replied. “Is he butchering all your favourite songs?”

She rolled her eyes, more amused than annoyed. “No, Danno, he’s really good.” Then, maybe anticipating an argument, or maybe just not wanting to interrupt the moment any more, she added, “Listen.”

With Grace a warm, comfortable weight against his side and Steve close enough that Danny could reach out and touch, if he needed to, he let himself relax back against the couch. And he listened.

Grace was right; Steve was pretty good.

***

There were nightmares again, but Danny had the strange feeling that it was the darkness that actually woke him; which shouldn’t make sense but somehow did. “Steve?” he mumbled before he was even fully awake. Steve was always his first thought now; always right there, front and centre, whether he had just woken up or not. Anxiety licked up Danny’s spine. There was pain, but mostly it was a feeling like he couldn’t breathe right. He rolled over, flung out an arm, and wasn’t surprised to find the sheets empty.

Light, sudden and bright, threw the empty bed into sharp relief. A second later thunder boomed; it made Danny jump. The storm was loud now that he was paying attention, wind and rain lashing against the window above his head. It had been open when he went to sleep, he was sure, and that made him frown. How long exactly had Steve been up?

Danny rolled out of bed, stumbling a little, something like head rush washing over him before he found his focus. Steve. He had to find Steve. In another flash of lightning he could see that the door to the guest room was open and he wavered; need to find Steve against need to check on Grace.

He went to check on Grace.

The bed was empty, covers thrown back. Danny could only stare at it a moment. Logically, he knew that the storm had probably just woken her. Or maybe she just wanted a glass of water. She was probably safe and sound downstairs. Anxiety wasn’t logical though and it beat rapidly in his chest.

“Danny?”

Steve was suddenly there, at the top of the stairs, sheeted white in a flash of lightning.

“Grace?”

“Downstairs. The power went out, what—?”

Danny punched him in the arm; not as hard as he could have. “I woke up and you were gone. You asshole, you know—”

Steve caught hold of his arms, held him fast. “It was two minutes. I had to check the fuse box. It was two minutes, Danny.”

Danny stared at him. Another flash of lightning lit up the house.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he said stupidly. It only felt stupid now, with Steve’s hands on his arms, hardly any distance between them, air moving easily in and out of his lungs like it had never had any problems. 

“I should have woken you.”

It was almost, but not quite, an apology. Danny kind of wanted to hit him again. His hands fisted in the material of Steve’s shirt instead, holding tight while he leaned forward and rested his forehead against Steve’s shoulder. Steve’s arms curled around his back, pulling him closer. Danny could hear his heartbeat, slightly faster than it should be, and feel the tickle of his breath above Danny’s ear.

He might have been able to exist in that moment forever, or at least a very long while, if it wasn’t interrupted by a voice whisper-calling from downstairs. “Uncle Steve? Danno?”

Steve turned first, but he didn’t break the hug, kept one arm around Danny’s back as he looked down over the railing. “We’re here, Gracie. Did you find the candles?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t find anything to light them with.”

“Candles?” Danny asked Steve, hoping the raised eyebrow would be conveyed by his tone if it couldn’t be seen in the dark.

Steve shrugged. “Power’s out. Grace wanted to light candles.”

Danny felt a dizzying rush of warmth at the thought that Steve would do something just because it was what Grace wanted. If it was just the two of them, Danny was sure he’d be getting a lecture about flashlights being more practical or something.

“I have a lighter we can use,” Steve told Grace. “Where do you want to put them?”

Danny had never seen Steve smoke, but he did indeed own a lighter. Several, in fact, and the one he plucked out of the desk drawer was so glittery it must have been left behind by Mary at some point. Grace had him light a candle in the kitchen so that she could see to make a cup of tea—“her mother’s daughter,” Danny muttered to Steve—and then Danny carried it back upstairs for her, since she was wide awake and couldn’t possibly sleep yet, so she may as well read for a while.

Danny was familiar with how this sort of thing went.

“Just make sure you blow the candle out before you go to sleep,” he told her.

“I will.”

It was said with all the _duh obviously_ that a twelve year old could manage. Danny would come back and check that she actually had blown it out anyway. He was wide awake himself and half-tempted to just give up on sleep and go downstairs to do something productive, but Steve was leading the way back to his bedroom with another flickering candle so Danny followed. 

_Romantic_ , he thought when Steve set the candle beside the bed, then he wanted to smack himself. He picked up his phone from the nightstand and saw that it was only three-thirty, which meant that going back to sleep was definitely the right call. But even after they’d crawled back into bed and Steve had blown the candle out, he was still wide awake.

“I woke up and you were gone,” he found himself saying again.

Steve shifted beside him. Another flash of lightning lit up his face, but the glimpse was too brief to really see his expression. Danny wasn’t sure what he was expecting. A proper apology? An argument? But it wasn’t for Steve to quietly admit, “I forgot.”

Danny didn’t know how he could forget; he was hyper-aware of it at all times himself.

“I think it was the storm,” Steve continued, still in that same quiet tone. “It woke me up and I—I wasn’t sure where I was for a moment, just that there was thunder and rain and something was wrong. It was like…” He trailed off. Started again. “It reminded me of something. I can’t tell you what. But I was already out of bed and Grace grabbed me in the hallway, told me the lights wouldn’t work, and I just… I forgot.” He turned then; the brush of his fingers over Danny’s arm possibly deliberate, possibly not. “It really was only two minutes.”

Danny wanted to ask what storms reminded him of. But he knew Steve wouldn’t tell him, and a part of him wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know. 

“Okay,” he said. What the hell else was there to say? “But next time you better wake me up because I am getting really fucking sick of waking up in a panic.”

Instead of promising that he would, like a normal person, Steve said, “I’m sorry.”

Danny sighed. “It’s not your fault.”

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. But honestly? That almost made it worse. Danny was a lot happier when he had someone he could blame.

***

Grace woke them up. Or, more accurately, the clatter of Grace dropping something in the kitchen woke Danny up. Steve, he suspected, had not gone back to sleep. Danny was honestly a little surprised he’d gone back to sleep himself. It probably had more to do with the SEAL-shaped warmth beside him than he cared to admit.

“Time’s’it?” he mumbled, rolling over to grab for his phone.

“Seven-forty,” Steve replied promptly—and correctly, even though Danny was sure he wasn’t wearing a watch or had looked at his phone.

He groaned, rolling back over. It would be too early even if he hadn’t had a disturbed night. It was the weekend; those were supposed to be for sleeping in.

“Should we make sure she’s not breaking anything?”

Danny’s mind stuttered for a second. Steve probably had no idea how much like a parent he sounded just then. It was like deja vu, only it had always been Rachel that Danny woke up beside, too early on a Sunday morning, sleepily talking through who should go check on the suspicious sounds from downstairs until they inevitably both got up to do it.

(Here he was again, comparing this situation to his marriage, and he still wasn’t going to think about why it came so easily.)

“Nah,” he said. “‘S’fine.”

Probably.

“The storm is gone,” Steve reported. “It’s going to be a nice day.”

Danny just grunted. “It’s always a nice day.”

“I thought maybe we could invite everyone over tonight, have a barbecue?”

“You asking me, or telling?”

“Asking.”

And he was. Danny lifted his head enough to squint up at Steve’s face and found it sincere and open; and if Danny said no right then, he was reasonably sure there wouldn't even be an argument.

He didn't say no.

“A barbecue sounds good,” he agreed.

There was another suspiciously loud sound from downstairs. They both winced.

“Come on,” Steve said. “We should get up.”

He pushed himself up onto one elbow, leaning slightly forward into Danny’s space, and for a second Danny was sure he was about to be kissed; just an absent little good-morning kind of gesture. But then Steve blinked and rolled quickly out of bed instead. 

Danny had no choice but to follow.

***

Lou arrived for the barbecue first, six-pack of beer in one hand and a foil-covered dish in the other. 

“Chicken wings,” he offered in explanation. “Renée says sorry she couldn’t make it.”

He’d brought Will though, who quickly went off to find Grace. 

Chin and Kono arrived together not long after, foregoing the front door and finding their way out back around the side of the house. Kono squeezed extra tight when she hugged first Danny, then Steve. 

“Office has been quiet without you guys,” she said. 

“Must be nice,” Danny joked. “Working without fear of getting shot at.”

“A little bit boring, actually,” Kono replied, laughing. 

Max showed up next, then Jerry, and lastly Kamekona, bags of shrimp in hand. For the whole evening the backyard was full of their friends, their family, but even amidst all the laughter and chatter, Danny felt a little like he and Steve were in their own little bubble. Steve had an arm across the back of Danny’s chair and Danny couldn’t deny that he was leaning into his partner. He was feeling pleasantly buzzed and not entirely sure it was just from the beer. If he got drunk and Steve didn’t, he wondered, would Steve feel it? Or if they were both drunk, would they feel it doubly because of the magic connecting them? He might have to mention that to Steve later; science guy that he was, he’d probably be willing to experiment. 

The night was winding down, sun long gone, the yard lit by the lights on inside the house and the strings of fairy lights that had been wrapped around the balcony for some-thing-or-other and never taken down. Lou and Will headed off first, then Max, Jerry and Kamekona, all with cheerful goodbyes. Grace was yawning by then, trying to hide it, and Danny only had to suggest she go to bed twice before she gave in and went upstairs.

Then it was just the four of them; Chin and Kono and Steve and Danny, the way it had been in the beginning.

“So,” Chin said.

“So,” Danny echoed.

“How are you two doing?”

Danny glanced at Steve. Steve wasn’t looking at him, gaze lost somewhere around the label he was idly picking at with his thumb. He looked tired, Danny thought, more tired than he had earlier. But maybe that was just a trick of the light.

Danny shrugged. “We haven’t killed each other yet, so.”

Kono smiled slightly, but she was the only one. “The marriage counsellor would be proud, huh?”

Danny snorted. She had no idea that she was echoing his own thoughts from a few days ago. 

“I don’t think we’ll be telling Dr Carlin about this one,” Steve said. “It’s a little…”

“Hard to believe?” Chin suggested

“Completely fucking crazy?” Danny added.

“Out there,” Steve ended on, ignoring them both. “Even for us.”

The quick little glance at Danny then, when he said _us_ , made it clear that he didn’t mean Five-0. It made Danny smile. 

“I don’t know, travelling all the way to North Korea to rescue you was pretty crazy.”

That kicked off a series of craziest moments being recounted, and it wasn’t until afterwards that Danny realised Chin and Kono had been distracted from their original line of questioning without knowing it. He hadn’t even realised himself until it had happened, even though he’d been a key part of the distracting. He looked at Steve again, and he didn’t look so tired anymore, but maybe that was the real trick of the light.

They were going to have to talk about this eventually, he knew, but if Steve didn’t want to do that in front of their friends then okay. Fine. Danny could respect that. He could pretend everything was fine just as well.

***

He knew Steve hadn’t slept because his nightmares had been his own. Marco Reyes and Mattie, tortured and killed and stuffed in an oil drum; his mother crying, screaming, blaming Danny for all the way things had gone wrong; taking the lid off that drum and finding Grace instead. Opening another and finding Steve. Danny woke up gasping, stomach twisted into nauseous knots, and when he automatically reached out beside him, all he touched was cold sheets.

Again.

He found Steve sitting downstairs. Any other time, he would have been doing his brooding on the chairs out by the beach, but that was too far these days. Honestly, from the bedroom to the living room was stretching it as well. Danny was starting to think that any distance was too far because it wasn’t until he was sitting on the couch, bumping his shoulder against Steve’s, that the tightness in his chest started to ease.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

What a surprise. Danny wondered whether it was his imagination that the closer this bond pulled them together, the further away Steve actually got. Oh he was there physically, he had no choice about that, but mentally? Emotionally? Danny hadn’t seen him this distant since the time he ran off to Japan with nothing but a _Dear Danno_ letter to tell anyone he was gone.

It was all wrong, all bleeding over. They were sharing dreams, sharing emotions, sharing more than either of them wanted to. 

But no matter how wrong this whole situation was, it _felt_ _right_. Maybe that was just the magic too, but being with Steve made sense on a level so far beyond the scope of human understanding that Danny couldn’t even try to put it into words. This was what things felt like with Rachel in the beginning, he thought, assuming he wasn’t just looking back with rose-tinted glasses. It was the kind of thought that was a familiar intrusion by now but Danny still didn't have a clue what to do with it.

“You can’t just stop sleeping,” he said.

Nothing.

“I mean it, Steven, you’re not actually a robot. Besides, I’m probably going to have nightmares whether they belong to you or not, so.”

Another quiet breath and then, “Matt?” Steve asked, shrewd as ever.

Danny sighed. “Mostly, yeah. Some other stuff too. But, uh, before you ask, ‘cause I know you’re gonna ask, it’s nothin’ I want to talk about, okay?”

“Okay.” 

Neither of them mentioned that if this kept up much longer then Steve was probably going to see them anyway. Maybe it would be kinder to prepare him, to give him a heads up about what Danny’s subconscious might inflict on him the next time they fell asleep, but Danny wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

Surprisingly, Steve was the one to break the silence next. Danny felt him take a breath, felt the way he braced like he was waiting for impact before he spoke, voice low, almost like a confession.

“They weren’t so bad anymore. The dreams, I mean, the ones about my dad and Freddie. It’s been four years, you know? I never stopped missing them, but I’d go weeks, sometimes months, without seeing that day coming back to haunt me in my sleep.”

Danny didn’t need to ask what changed. Wo Fat. Of course it was fucking Wo Fat. Danny had his own nightmares about finding Steve in that basement

Steve put his head in his hands, voice slightly muffled when he added, “I'd only just started sleeping again.”

Danny couldn’t track the jump in conversation for a moment. Only just started sleeping before what? This? It made his chest ache for entirely non-magic reasons. Or did he mean before Wo Fat? Which was another sharp ache of its own.

“You didn’t tell me you weren’t sleeping,” he said, too quiet to be an accusation. There was a lot Steve didn’t tell him, he knew that, but knowing it didn’t mean he liked it. And this was one of those things that he was pretty sure he should have realised himself, which meant he liked it even less. 

Steve shrugged. “You had your own shit, you didn’t need to be worrying about me too.”

 _I always worry about you_ , Danny thought. Someone had to; God knows Steve didn’t do it enough himself.

“Still,” he said. “You could have told me.”

Steve looked at him for a long moment, gaze unreadable in the darkness. Then he let out a breath that took the tension in his shoulders with it. It left him worn-looking and slumped against Danny’s side.

“I know,” he said quietly.

A month ago, hell even a week ago, Danny wouldn’t have been sure that he really did. But now, after this, _because of_ this, he was pretty sure Steve did know. He just wished that knowing and doing were the same thing.

***

Danny woke up on the couch with a crick in his neck and a blanket over him. It was dark green and ridiculously soft and he was pretty sure he’d never seen it before. He wondered whether it was new or if Steve had unearthed it from some long-forgotten cupboard just for him.

The tightness in his chest was back, tingles of anxiety lurking just out of reach, but Danny could still move and breath and his headache was dull, probably from lack of caffeine more than anything else, which meant that Steve couldn’t be too far. He got up slowly, listening to the house around him; birds chirping outside the open lanai door, the dishwasher humming, but no indication of where Steve had disappeared to. Danny could hope he’d gone up to bed and caught a few hours sleep, but he knew his partner too well to put much stock in that.

“Steve?”

He rubbed at his chest.

It was still early, he guessed. Grace must not be up yet because Danny was sure he wouldn’t have slept through his daughter clattering down the stairs or making breakfast. There was no fresh coffee, no sign that Steve had made any yet this morning, so Danny turned away from the kitchen and wandered toward the dining room instead.

He found Steve there at the table, head on his arms, fast asleep. Jerry’s research was spread out around him, post-it notes in various colours stuck to some of the papers. There was a system, probably, but Danny couldn’t see it. He picked up a yellow note—not yet attached to anything—that simply read ‘SEAL’, underlined twice. He shook his head. 

Maybe it was the movement, or some small sound he didn’t realise he’d made, but Steve’s head came up, suddenly awake and alert. As soon as he saw that it was just Danny, he relaxed.

“You worried about forgetting who you are?” Danny asked him.

Steve’s face screwed up in confusion. “What?”

Danny waved the post-it note. Steve squinted at it. When he realised what it was, he shook his head. 

“No, it’s—it’s not SEAL, it’s seal. Like a magical seal.”

That didn’t really clear much up. Danny didn’t even know what a magical seal was. Something that trapped magic? Or magic that trapped something else? Even after several days of reading about this stuff, he still felt like he didn’t understand. 

And okay, yes, despite the circumstances, he was still finding it all a little hard to believe.

“Why is a seal important?” he asked.

“Because the magic has to come from somewhere,” Steve said, tone implying that this should be obvious. Maybe it was to people who believed in magic. “I just can’t figure out where…” He shuffled a few papers around. “We should go back to the crime scene. Maybe we missed something.”

“Really? You know how thorough our CSU guys are, babe.”

Steve shook his head, dismissive. “They weren’t looking for magic.”

He had a point. But.

“Grace,” Danny reminded him.

For a moment, he was sure Steve was about to say they could take her with them—which was definitely going to incur more than a little bit of yelling—but he visibly bit the words back.

“Send the others,” Danny suggested.

Steve didn’t look happy at having to get others to work the case for him. He was never happy about it when he was injured and he wasn’t injured now; except for the whole magically-attached-to-Danny thing, he should have been perfectly capable of working a case. But proving that he could, on occasion, cave to reason, he sighed and said, “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I’ll call Chin.”

***

They ate pancakes for breakfast. It was her last day with them and Grace wanted pancakes, so pancakes it was. The whole day was a string of things Grace wanted to do, including spending hours on the beach again. And Danny was happy to say that he didn’t freak out this time. (Although that was maybe because Steve stuck much closer to his side, choosing to stretch out in the sand like a beached seal instead of the usual water-loving one that he was.) 

All too soon it was evening and Danny was knocking on the door to the guest room, saying, “Hey, monkey, are you ready to go?”

Grace was sitting on the bed, her bag packed beside her. She was doing something on her phone, but she put it down when she saw him, looking up with such a serious look that Danny immediately came in and sat beside her.

“Everything okay?”

Grace worried her lip for a moment, then blurted out, “Are you and Uncle Steve dating?”

Danny had been expecting this. He had, really, but expecting it didn’t make him ready for it.

“No. No, we’re… Why do you think we’re dating?” he asked, blatantly stalling. 

Grace shrugged. “I saw you sleeping together, and you always touch each other, but not how you usually do, more like how you and mom used to touch each other.”

Did they? Danny hadn’t even noticed. They were in each other’s space more than usual, sure, they kind of had to be these days, but he didn’t think they’d been especially… couple-y, about it.

Had they?

“No monkey,” he said. “Steve and I aren’t dating. We’re just…”

 _Acting like we are because of magic._ Danny didn’t know how to begin to explain that. 

But Grace was nodding, accepting the non-explanation, young face thoughtful. “Are you going to?”

Danny opened his mouth to say no, but then stopped. What if they didn’t figure this out? What if they never got unattached from each other?

“I don’t know,” he told her. “We’re… figuring it out.”

That was a nice, safe, non-specific answer. 

“It’s okay if you want to,” Grace told him. “I don’t care if you date boys as well as girls. And I like Uncle Steve.”

Danny smiled. How could he not? He pulled her into a hug. “Thank you, monkey. That means a lot.”

And it did, whether he wanted to date Steve or not.

***

That night Danny was tied to a chair. Everything felt slightly wobbly, like he was on a boat, but that didn’t seem right. The walls were concrete, not metal, and water dripped from a broken pipe above his head. The room didn’t look exactly the same, distorted by Steve’s unconscious mind, but Danny had a horrible feeling he knew what this one was about.

Having Steve’s dreams was a strange feeling. It was almost like lucid dreaming, like watching from outside as well as from within. Danny always knew he was dreaming, in a way that he usually never did, but he still couldn’t control what happened. And that made it worse, knowing but not being able to control the outcome. Danny might never tease Steve about his control issues again if they managed to break this curse.

He wondered whether Steve knew he was there. If they were sharing this dream and Danny knew it was a dream, did that mean that Steve knew it was a dream as well? He hoped so. He hoped so even more when the door opened and it wasn’t Wo Fat who stepped into the room but Doris McGarrett. He struggled in the chair. _Wake up_ , he thought desperately, _wake up wake up wake up._

“Mom?”

Danny felt his mouth move and heard Steve’s voice come out. If he looked down, he would see puckered scars and curling tattoos. This wasn’t really him. But he felt everything as though it was; right down to the fear and confusion coiling tight in Steve’s chest.

 _Wake up_ , he continued to chant, _please wake up._

Doris stepped closer. The door slammed shut. Danny could feel his heart thudding. 

_Wake up wake up wake up_.

He expected questions, interrogation, but Doris didn’t say a word. She circled, silent except for the click of her heels. Danny struggled harder; the handcuffs stayed tight.

“Mom? What are you—”

The first zap of the cattle prod made him scream. The pain was everywhere, he couldn’t even tell where it was coming from, couldn’t feel anything except the burning waves of electricity. When it stopped, Danny struggled to lift his head, struggled to see through the blurring of tears. Doris was gone and Wo Fat was laughing at him.

“Wasn’t that fun, brother?”

There was a gun in his hand and Danny looked down, looked for the gun that should have been in his own hand. Steve had had a gun when this happened, he’d shot Wo Fat, killed him before Wo Fat could kill him, so where the hell was the—

Danny struggled harder. Knew it was useless but couldn’t help it. Had Steve panicked at the time? He didn’t know. Probably not. But Steve had had a chance then, and he didn’t now, Wo Fat had the upper hand, had him dead to fucking rights and he was going to shoot him, that deranged grin on his face while he did it. 

Danny closed his eyes. There had to be a way out of here—there had to be a way to wake up—there had to—

The gunshot jolted him out of the dream, but he didn’t wake up. Danny’s eyes flew open and he was staring in horror at Marco Reyes splayed out before him, a perfect hole in the centre of his forehead.

“Danno?”

Grace was there too, looking up at him with wide, frightened eyes. Why the hell was Grace there? Danny reached for her and she shied away, turned her face into another chest, wrapped her skinny arms around another waist, hiding herself from Danny. 

Mattie held her close, expression reproachful. “You didn’t have to kill him,” he said.

Danny shook his head. He was still holding the gun, couldn’t seem to make himself drop it. “He killed you.”

“He had a family.”

“I didn’t—Mattie, he killed you—I couldn’t—”

“Danny.” Steve was there. He was grabbing Danny’s shoulders, shaking him, his voice low and urgent. “We need to go. We’ve got to get out of here, Danny.”

Get out? Go? Go where? 

Steve kept looking over his shoulder. Everything was dark and murky; Danny didn’t know what there was to see but Steve seemed sure there was something there. He grabbed Danny’s hand and started pulling him along.

“No.” Danny dug his heels in. “Wait—”

He reached out for Grace. He couldn’t leave her behind. He _wouldn’t_. 

“Gracie, sweetheart—” 

He just managed to reach her, fingers closing around her wrist. But as soon as he touched her, Grace opened her mouth and shrieked. 

***

When Danny woke up feeling like he couldn’t breathe, it wasn’t because Steve wasn’t there. Steve was wrapped around him, hugging him tight, whispering words that Danny only caught snatches of.

Danny turned into his partner’s chest, hid his face against the soft cotton and let himself cry. 

***

They didn’t talk about it in the morning. There didn’t seem much point anymore; anything that could be said already had been. They had nightmares. They woke up. It sucked. 

Danny was tired and—he could admit it—grumpy, even after his morning coffee. Steve was quiet, preoccupied with whatever was going on inside his own head, but he was always right there when Danny turned around. And he turned around often, the feeling of eyes on him like an itch beneath his skin, but Steve was never looking at him when he checked. 

The feeling was driving Danny crazy and it was a relief when his phone rang. He snatched it up, barely pausing to check caller I.D. before answering, desperate for the distraction. It was a short conversation, only a minute or two long, and when he hung up, Steve was just as quick to jump at the possible distraction.

“Who was that?”

Danny almost didn’t want to answer honestly. “That was Chin. He said they caught a new case.”

Steve brightened immediately. “They need our help?”

“Actually, he called specifically to tell us that they do not need our help and if we step foot outside this house he will happily handcuff us together himself.”

Steve scowled. He knew as well as Danny did that working a case right now was not a good idea, but if Danny was going stir-crazy sitting at home all day then Steve was a hairsbreadth from going out anyway, consequences be damned. Danny was pretty sure the only reason he hadn’t bailed on their enforced house arrest yet was because the consequences wouldn’t just affect him.

“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Steve said.

“We don’t have much of a choice.”

He was right and Steve knew it.

If Danny thought Steve was restless before, it was nothing compared to how he got knowing that their team was working a case and he was stuck at home. Not being able to burn his energy running or swimming wasn’t helping. He kept checking his phone, curling his hand in the pocket where Danny was sure his car keys were hiding. Danny tried to distract him with research for their own personal case, but even that didn’t hold his attention.

“They need our help,” he insisted.

“What help?” Danny argued. “In case you have forgotten, we are no help to anyone right now, least of all ourselves. If we go out there and something happens—we get separated because you take off after a suspect or we get at shot at because you can’t wait for backup–”

“Why am I always the problem in these scenarios?”

“My point, Steven, is that if something happens to one of us, it happens to both of us. And I have a daughter who will be very upset if you get me killed.”

Steve just set his jaw even more stubbornly. “So we make sure nothing happens.”

Danny threw up his hands. Honestly, he didn’t know why he even bothered.

***

Something happened. Of fucking course something happened. One minute Danny was running down the sidewalk, shouting a warning to his stupid, idiotic, reckless—did he mention _stupid_ —partner; the next he was waking up in the hospital with a pounding headache and the stomach churning feeling that something was horribly wrong. He had to work to turn his head, movements sluggish, like he was wading through quicksand. He found Chin slumped in a chair beside his bed and it did nothing to ease the anxiety crawling beneath his skin.

“Steve?” It came out as a croak, barely audible, and Danny had to lick his lips before he could try again.

Chin’s face was a mask of stoicism, but that was answer enough.

Danny let his eyes fall shut. “I’m going to kill him.”

He wouldn’t actually. Couldn’t, no matter how much he really, truly wanted to for this bullshit situation, because if Steve died then odds were pretty good that Danny would die too. And as had previously been pointed out to the Neanderthal, he had a daughter to think about. 

“I need to see him.”

Any other time, there might have been arguments about the need to stay in bed, but Chin just nodded. He helped Danny stand up, helped him take the three shaky steps it took to reach the curtain partitioning off his bed and push it aside.

Steve looked… not good. Oh he’d definitely looked worse—North Korea, Afghanistan, that fucked up situation with Wo Fat not even six months ago—but his face was pale and the bruises were dark and Danny was really getting sick of seeing him in a sling. When he dropped into the chair beside the bed though, Steve opened his eyes, smiling with something like relief even though it must have hurt, pulling at his split lip.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

Danny wanted to kiss him. Hit him. Fuck, he didn’t know, maybe both. He wouldn’t do either, though, because it was too hard to tell how much of it was what he actually wanted and how much was this damned magical bond between them. No longer being allowed to have personal space was—okay, it was annoying, incredibly so; but the worst part was that Danny couldn’t even trust his own feelings anymore.

“I hate you.” It came out choked and, oh—oh fuck, Danny was almost crying, couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it, too much anger and despair and clawing panic competing to fill his chest. “I hate you so much.”

Steve took it with the same stoic face he’d taken so much over the last week. Danny grabbed his hand, squeezing so tight it must have hurt. He was still mad but—he needed to touch. Needed that extra layer of _Steve is alive_. 

“You can’t just think of yourself anymore. Do you get that? My life is literally dependent on you not dying; and I shouldn’t need to remind you that I have a daughter who would very much appreciate it if her father did not die because his idiot partner has to be involved in every single shootout on this goddamned island.”

Steve was like stone, chiselled and cold. If Danny hadn’t felt the sharp stab of fear when he mentioned Grace, he might think Steve wasn’t even listening. As it was, he still wasn’t sure he was really processing.

“I need you to say it,” he pushed. “I need to hear you say that you know this is bigger than just you, Steven.”

“I know.” Steve’s voice was a rough whisper.

It should have soothed Danny’s anger, but instead it only stoked it. “Then what the hell is your problem?”

“They needed our help.”

“They did not need our fucking help. That’s a piss-poor excuse and you know it. You knew exactly the danger you were running into and you didn’t even think—”

“I couldn’t just do nothing—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Chin cut in. He was standing beside Danny, putting a calming hand on his arm, and Danny realised that his grip on Steve’s hand must have become tight enough to hurt. He made himself let go. Pretended he didn’t feel it like a physical loss.

“Now is not the time for this,” Chin continued firmly. “You are both supposed to be resting.”

 _And whose fault is that?_ Danny almost snapped. He bit the words back. Chin was right; it wasn’t the time. 

Steve wasn’t done though. “I did think,” he said. His eyes were closed now, pain lines etched across his face, but his voice was low and steady. “If I’d been sure that the suspect wasn’t going to hurt anyone else, I wouldn’t have gone after him.”

Danny didn’t reply.

Steve didn’t seem to expect him to. 

***

Lou was the one who dropped them home when the hospital let them go. He followed them inside, spinning excuses about making sure they ate something, and Danny was exhausted enough that he didn’t argue. He just slouched down on the couch and ignored the way that Steve‘s movements were stiff and painful-looking when he sat down beside him, space carefully left between them. 

Lou heated up leftovers and turned the TV on and filled the stilted silence with faux-casual commentary until Steve eventually said, “We’re fine, Lou. You don’t have to stay.”

Lou glanced at Danny. Whatever he was looking for, he must have seen it because he nodded. “Call if you need anything,” he said. And he looked right at Steve, voice heavier as he repeated, “Anything.”

Danny pretended not to notice. He held out for a good two minutes after the door shut; then he sighed. “Come here.”

Steve glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. He sounded a little bit petulant when he said, “I thought you were mad.”

“I was. I am. But looking at you is making me hurt and I’m not a complete asshole, so just. Come here, will you?”

Steve held out for a much shorter time than two minutes; it was thirty seconds, maybe, before he gave in and slumped against Danny, head on his shoulder, and Danny carefully wrapped an arm around his injured shoulder. There was an almost instant relief, to be touching him, and he hoped Steve felt it too; thought that he must, because he was growing heavier against Danny’s side, tension bleeding out. They sat there for a long time, still not talking, but the silence not so stilted anymore, and Danny thought maybe Steve had fallen asleep until he took a breath and said, “I’m sorry I got you hurt.”

“That’s not why I was mad.”

“Yes it was.”

“No, it—” Danny stopped. He replayed all the yelling he’d done at Steve in his head and it made him wince. Okay, yeah, maybe he was mad about that. But, “That was only part of it. I was mad that you didn’t think about yourself either. This thing isn’t just a problem for me out there, you get that right? If something had happened to me instead of you… We still would have ended up in the hospital.”

_Or worse._

Steve was probably thinking some stupid thing like _the risk was acceptable_ or some bullshit. Danny could see it on his face. But all he said was, “I can’t just sit on the sidelines. If this—if there isn’t a way to get rid of the magic binding us together, we’re going to have to figure out how to work with it.”

“It’s not going to be permanent.”

“It might be. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about that.”

Danny sighed. He was too tired for this conversation. Too tired and just—not ready. He didn’t want to think about this being permanent let alone talk like it might actually happen.

“I’m tired,” he said instead. “Let’s just go to bed. We can figure that out in the morning if we have to.”

It was a slow, arthritic trek up the stairs. Danny brushed his teeth quickly and when he came out of the bathroom, Steve was sitting on the edge of the bed, struggling to loosen the strap on his sling so he could lift it over his head without moving his shoulder too much.

Danny rolled his eyes. “Let me help you.”

Steve huffed. “I can do it.”

But he dropped his hand, let Danny grab the plastic tab and toggle it until the strap was longer. He had a flash of Steve doing the same thing to his backpack the last time they went hiking. At the time, he had grumbled about personal space, but now it was like he couldn’t get close enough. 

He got the sling over Steve’s head, let Steve pull it off his arm and toss it on the bed himself. Danny didn’t think before starting on the buttons of Steve’s shirt. The material was soft, clearly well-worn, a few of the buttons starting to come loose. Steve just sat there, watching him, until the last button was undone, the shirt falling open. The edges of several dark bruises peeked out; Danny couldn’t resist the urge to touch, to soothe, to push back the edge of the shirt and run light fingers over the damage.

Steve sucked in a breath. It made Danny look up and he suddenly realised just how close they were. He stepped back. “I should…”

Steve caught the edge of his shirt, kept him there beside the bed. His pupils were wide, his lips slightly parted.

“Danny.”

There was so much in that one word.

Danny swallowed. “Yeah.”

He meant to make it a question, but it came out slightly breathless instead. 

Steve took it as permission. His hand fell away from Danny’s shirt, settled on his waist instead, tugging Danny to fit between his legs as he stretched up and kissed him. It was careful at first, hesitant, just a press of closed lips, but when Steve started to pull away, Danny made a sound of protest. The next kiss was anything but hesitant.

It was strange, leaning down to kiss Steve. Strange in a way that sent a thrill right through Danny. He curled his hand around the back of Steve’s neck, groaned when Steve bit at his bottom lip. Steve kissed like he was planning an op; all focus and dedication and, fuck, the things he could do with his tongue. Danny wanted to push him back on the bed and see just what else that tongue could do, but instead he pulled back, put a hand on Steve’s shoulder to stop the instinctual movement to follow. 

He had to catch his breath before he could say, “Wait, stop.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re hurt.”

Steve’s brow wrinkled, like he couldn’t comprehend that. “I’m fine.”

But Danny shook his head. Steve was hurt, yes, but that was only part of it. Only an excuse, really, because Steve wasn’t that badly hurt. Not so bad they couldn’t work around it.

“Danny?”

“It’s not just that you’re hurt,” he admitted. 

There must have been some part of Steve that was thinking about it too because he caught on quickly. His shoulders dropped, slumping. “The magic.”

“I can’t know that you want this.” Danny hated to say it, but he had to. Hell, he didn’t even know if he wanted this, couldn’t trust his own mind, his own feelings, and he hated it. Fuck, he hated it. “As long as we have this curse connecting us, I can’t—I don’t—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“Steve...”

Steve shook his head. “You’re right. It was stupid. I wasn’t thinking.”

Danny felt helpless. He wanted to say that it wasn’t about thinking. He hadn’t been thinking either, that was the whole point, they’d been _feeling_ and feeling was exactly the problem these days. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Steve wouldn’t look at him. “Me too.”

Danny resisted the urge to apologise again. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we should.”

But sleep was a long time coming. Danny stared up at the ceiling and tried to pretend that he wasn’t hyper-aware of every movement Steve made beside him.

***

The problem was… The problem was that Danny could get used to waking up every morning with Steve. Steve was actually still out this time, brow knotted even in sleep, but almost… Was it too cliché to say he looked younger in sleep? Probably. It wasn’t quite right, anyway; if anything the edge of grey creeping in was even more obvious in the morning light. No, it was more that he looked…

 _Vulnerable_ , Danny thought, then immediately quashed it.

Trusting, maybe. Trusting was better.

Steve sighed a little in his sleep and shifted. Danny thought he must be waking but he actually pressed closer, head coming to rest almost against Danny’s shoulder. He mumbled something and the whisper of lips against Danny’s arm made him shiver. He reached out with his other hand, fumbled around the nightstand until he could grab his phone. The time on the screen told him it was still early, just a little after six. He almost groaned; early mornings were becoming far too familiar these days. 

Without Grace, there was no reason to get up though, and he couldn’t just leave Steve. He didn’t _want_ to leave Steve. Maybe it was just the magic, but Danny couldn’t bring himself to care. He was warm and comfortable and it was still early; he could just close his eyes, curl a little closer, and enjoy this moment. In all of this mess, it was only fair that he was allowed to enjoy this one moment. He deserved that much. 

***

He must have gone back to sleep because he woke again to the sound of his phone ringing. Steve beat him to alertness, digging the phone out from between the covers and answering with a curt, if still sleep-rough, “McGarret.”

Danny listened to the one-sided conversation as he tried to wake himself up. The finger that poked him in the shoulder definitely helped and he swatted at Steve’s hand as he muttered an _ow._

“Chin has something,” his partner reported. “Get up.”

Chin has what? Danny started to ask—and then it caught up to him. Oh. _Oh_. Something that could help them, it must be. Danny was suddenly wide awake.

“He figured out how to break the curse?”

“He thinks so.”

Steve was already up, moving briskly to gather clothes and pull them on. Danny was quick to find his own t-shirt and jeans and get changed. So quick that he put the shirt on backwards and swore when he realised, the cloth getting tangled around his head as he tries to twist it around without taking it all the way off.

“They want us to meet them back at the crime scene,” Steve said, waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Danny to get his clothes on properly and pull on socks and shoes. “I’ll drive.”

“Of course you will,” Danny muttered. Then he stopped, realising something. “Hang on a moment, you’re not supposed to be driving with your shoulder. And where the fuck is your sling?”

“My shoulder is fine,” Steve argued, despite the fact that he was holding his arm stiffly against his ribs. As if Danny wouldn’t notice.

He shook his head. “Sling, now. I’m driving.”

***

The scene was pretty much exactly how Danny remembered it, except for a few missing things around the room that CSU must have taken away with them. One of those things was probably the worn, leather-bound book that Jerry arrived carrying, which Danny vaguely remembered the cult leader chanting over the last time they were here. Steve and Jerry immediately started pouring over the pages, heads bent close together. Danny tried to pay attention to what they were saying, but honestly he didn’t understand half of it. He didn’t really care, either, just as long as it worked.

He moved over to where Chin and Kono were laying things out in the centre of a neat chalk circle. Dried herbs, something in a decorative bottle that may as well have been water, for all Danny knew, and a wicked looking ornate dagger that he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the purpose of. He picked up one of the half-melted candles that were dotted around the place instead. 

“Should we light some of these?”

Chin just shook his head, smile quietly amused. “You’ve seen too many movies, brah.”

“Yeah, well, I thought they were the only place that magic existed before this, so.”

He was also pretty sure the candles had been lit last time, but maybe that was just to add to the creepy cult aesthetic.

Lou showed up then and he gave the dagger the same wary look that Danny had. “You’re not going to cut them with that thing, are you?” he asked.

Kono shook her head. “No, it’s just the seal.”

Danny squinted at it. He tried to remember what Steve told him about seals. “That’s a magical knife?”

“Not exactly,” Kono said. “It just stores the magic. We think.”

“You think,” Danny repeated. That was not the kind of low confidence Danny liked to hear when they were literally playing with his and Steve’s lives here.

“We’re pretty sure,” Chin hastened to reassure him. But _pretty sure_ still wasn’t _completely 100% positive and this will in no way main or kill you_. 

“You know what?” Danny said, backing away with his hands up. “I don’t think I want to know. Just do whatever you have to do so I can go home please.”

 _Do whatever you have to do_ apparently meant Steve and Danny standing in the middle of the chalk circle holding hands. Danny couldn’t help thinking that the last time he’d been in a position like this it was at an altar with Rachel. He just hoped that this particular ceremony—if it could even be called that—ended better.

“Ready?” Steve asked.

Danny took a deep breath. “Ready.”

Jerry did—something. Danny couldn’t say what because he was suddenly in agony, sharp pain like an axe through his skull, whiting out the rest of the world around him. He cried out, not even aware of letting go of Steve or the way his knees must have buckled, only coming back to awareness to the fact that he was kneeling on the floor, clutching at his head. Voices were clamouring above him and there was a hand on Danny’s shoulder, steady but not steadying enough. 

“What the fuck was that?” he panted.

Everything was a dizzying blur for a moment after he pried his eyes open, but he blinked through it until he could find Steve hunched on the floor beside him. There was blood on the floor, on Steve’s shirt, running over his lip. Danny touched his own nose, but it wasn’t bleeding. 

“Danny?” Chin was the steadying hand on his shoulder, the worried face leaning into his space. “Danny, are you okay?”

“Ow,” he groaned. 

He’d meant to say yes.

“Should we call an ambulance?” Kono asked somewhere in the background.

 _And say what?_ Danny wondered. _Hello 911 we just tried to perform a magic ritual and almost killed our friends_. He choked on something that might have been hysterical laughter. It came out as another groan instead.

“No,” Steve was saying, voice strained. “No… No, we’re… Danny? Danny, you okay? Are you—?”

Danny tried to push up to his knees, vision blurring, world lurching. He closed his eyes. “You’re bleeding,” he said. He’d meant to say he was fine, but—Steve was bleeding. That was more important. Bleeding didn’t mean fine.

Steve swiped at the blood, like it was nothing more than an irritant. “I’m fine,” he said dismissively, his attention already shifting to fix unerringly on Jerry. “Did it work?”

“Uh.” Jerry glanced between them. “I’m not sure. I guess the only way to find out is–”

Steve was already pushing himself up off the floor. He swayed, stumbled a few steps, and waved off Kono when she stepped forward to help him. Kono, good friend that she was, ignored it and shadowed him as he made his way across the room, heading determinedly for the front of the house. 

It was obvious immediately that the spell hadn’t been broken. The ache in Danny’s chest grew tighter with every step Steve took away from him.

“Stop,” he said, before Steve had even left the room. “Steve, stop, I know you can feel it.”

Steve took another half-step, then stood still in the doorway. His shoulders were tense and his head bowed and Danny could feel his frustration. When he turned around and walked back to stand beside Danny, close enough for his shins to bump Danny’s knees, he did so with decidedly unhappy footsteps.

Danny slumped back against the floor. “Now what?” he said to the ugly, water-stained ceiling.

Nobody had a good answer for him.

***

The atmosphere after they left the others and returned home was nothing short of strained. Danny’s head was still aching; not pounding anymore, but a hollow sort of tension that threatened to become a migraine of epic proportions if he moved the wrong way. Steve seemed to be having the opposite problem; he couldn’t stop moving. They were back to the restless pacing of the first couple of days, it seemed, and it was making Danny feel dizzy even with his eyes closed.

“Please stop.”

Steve’s feet stuttered a step, but he completed the loop he was pacing before he came to a stop right in front of Danny.

“What?”

“You’re driving me crazy,” Danny said shortly. “Will you just—sit down. Please.”

“I’m driving _you_ crazy?”

Anger burned bright under Danny’s skin. While his voice had just been complaining—whining, even, he could admit to that—Steve’s tone was downright nasty.

“This is not my fault. No, shut up, you do not get to take this out on me when I am just as stuck here as you are.”

It was like the worst kind of feedback imaginable. They were both irritable, strung out, chafing at the bit, pissed off at the whole situation. The connection between them was like a live wire, signals going haywire across it, and the fuel they were adding to each other’s emotional turmoil was just being thrown right back at them.

“I’m sorry I want my own personal space back,” Steve snapped.

That was fine. Danny could snap too. “You think I don’t? You’re not exactly an easy person to live with.”

“ _I’m_ not easy to live with?”

And back and forth and back and forth until Danny shouted, “I want to sleep in my own bed!”

“You know if that’s what you wanted, you could have just said so when all this started–”

Danny almost growled in frustration. “That’s not what I meant.” It came out calmer, which was good. Calm was good. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Steve sighed, seemed to droop with it, let himself sink down to sit on the couch beside Danny. “Yeah,” he said, the fight gone from his voice just as quickly as it had come. “Yeah, I know.”

The silence was more comfortable than it had been all day.

“I do hate your mattress though,” Danny couldn’t help adding, even if it lacked the biting frustration from before.

Steve frowned. “What’s wrong with my mattress?”

“What’s—what’s _wrong_ with it?” Danny’s hands moved quickly through the air, sketching out his agitation. “It’s like sleeping on a rock, Steven. A really hard, really uncomfortable rock.”

All that earned him was an eye roll. “It’s not that bad,” Steve said, tone imbued with all the authority of someone who probably had slept quite comfortably on a rock. Danny almost wanted to ask, but the answer would probably be _it’s classified_ and that would just piss him off all over again. He rubbed at his forehead. It was starting to throb again.

“I need coffee.”

Steve grunted something resembling agreement. 

Neither of them moved. 

They’d only been out at the cult house a few hours, all up, but Danny was as exhausted as if he’d been up all night. He was seriously considering just stretching out on the couch and having a nap—if Steve could sit still long enough for that to happen—when Steve suddenly stood up. Danny thought for a moment that he was going to make coffee, but he was heading toward the dining area instead.

“What are you doing?” Danny asked, dragging himself to his feet to follow.

“The seal must have been wrong.”

“What?”

“The knife,” Steve said impatiently. “It must not have been the seal.”

Danny leaned against the doorway and watched him lay out all the crime scene photos. “What’s so important about the seal anyway?”

“The magic has to come from somewhere, Danny, it can’t just—it doesn’t just appear out of thin air.”

“You said that,” Danny huffed. “I still don’t really get it.”

Steve dropped the crime scene photos and reached for one of Jerry’s books instead. Several pages were dog-eared and even more were populated with brightly coloured sticky notes.

“Do you remember learning about the water cycle?”

“Sure. Evaporation, condensation, precipitation.”

Danny remembered Grace singing a song about it on repeat when she learnt about it in school. Something about ups and downs and all around the Earth. It was annoyingly catchy; he’d caught himself humming the tune more than once.

“Right. Water doesn’t come from nowhere, all the water on earth has always been on earth. You can move it and change its form but you can’t _create_ it. It’s the same with magic.”

Okay, that made sense. Danny could follow that.

“A seal is something that stores magic,” Steve continued. He flipped toward the end of the book and held it open to Danny; a black and white photograph of an amulet took up half the page. “Usually it’s something like this, see? But nothing like this was found at the crime scene. Chin thought it was the knife because it was handmade. The oldest thing there too, plus metals are the most typical material for a seal. Or gems.”

“But it wasn’t the knife.”

Steve shrugged. “Either that or the spell Jerry used was wrong.”

So really, it could be anything. Danny’s headache throbbed a little more insistently. He sighed. “You know it would have been helpful if you’d told me all this when you figured it out.”

Steve’s attention was already back on the crime scene photos. “I told you about the seal the other day. And Chin was the one who figured out the knife.”

“Or didn’t figure out the knife.”

Steve shot him a look. “Are you going to help me look through these, or just offer commentary?”

Danny shuffled over and sat in one of the dinning chairs. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”

***

Maybe it was just the fact that by the time they dragged themselves to bed, they were both so tired they couldn’t think straight, but for once there were no nightmares. Just strange, blurry dreams about floating houses and Grace’s bright, glittering laughter. For the first time in—god, he couldn’t even say how long—Danny woke up feeling rested. Steve was a warm weight against his back, one arm heavy across Danny’s waist, and they were going to have to talk about this at some point, probably, the whole big-spoon / little-spoon thing, but not right now. He was drowsy and comfortable, probably could have slipped easily back into sleep, but then the body behind him shifted and Steve’s breath tickled his neck. 

“Danno? You awake?”

Danny hummed. “That one was nice,” he slurred. “Sh’ld ‘ave more like that.”

“More dreams?”

“Mm. Good ones.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

There was an edge of bitterness in Steve’s voice and Danny winced. Yeah, okay, dreams were a bit of a sensitive subject. His own included. 

Steve started moving behind him. When he went to remove his arm from around Danny’s waist, Danny instinctively grabbed it, holding him still. He twisted his head, meeting the frown on Steve’s face with one of his own.

“Where are you going?”

“We should get up.”

“Why?” Danny pressed. He was comfortable, dammit, and until that moment he’d been pretty sure Steve was comfortable too. “It’s not like we’ve got anywhere to be.”

Steve hesitated. Danny watched it happen, watched the thoughts swim across his face, watched them ripple through his muscles, before he let out a long breath and relaxed back into the mattress. 

“Usually I’d be back from my morning swim by now,” he grumbled, but he wasn’t getting up so Danny just ignored him.

“Seriously,” Steve continued, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this sedentary.”

“You can go be a superSEAL later,” Danny placated. “Right now we’re sleeping.”

He was actually dozing, warm and comfortable and halfway back to sleep, thinking about Steve and seals and Steve-seals, bobbing lazily in the ocean, when it hit him. 

Danny sat up abruptly.

“We’re the seal.”

“Huh?”

“The magic—it’s in us.” Danny flapped an impatient hand between them when Steve just blinked up at him. “Call the others,” he said, throwing back the covers, excited energy humming through his veins. “Tell them I’ve got it.”

“Got what? What are you—?”

“The answer, Steven. The way to fix this. Tell them I know how to get rid of the curse.”

***

It wasn’t like losing a limb—not that Danny really knew what that felt like, but he’d heard stories, knew all about phantom pains and the way the brain forgot that a leg or an arm or a hand just wasn’t there anymore. Breaking the curse wasn’t like that. There was just a deep breath in and then out and when it was over, Danny felt just as whole as ever. 

Steve was frowning in front of him, back in the same position they were yesterday, but this time they were holding the dagger between them. They’d done it wrong the first time; used the dagger as a source of magic instead of something to put the magic into. But if the magic originally came from the dagger—and Danny was really counting on Chin having guessed the seal right for that—then it must have gone into him and Steve when they stumbled into the spell the cult were performing. So now all they had to do to get rid of it was take the magic out of them and put it back in the dagger.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Danny wriggled his fingers. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Neither,” Steve said.

The others all traded glances too. Kono shrugged. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Steve hesitated a moment this time, then he nodded. They turned away from each other, their friends hovering close by with every measured footstep. 

There was no sudden pain. No breathlessness. No rush of panic. Nothing. 

Danny’s next breath gusted out of him, leaving him almost shaky with relief. “It worked.”

Chin clapped him on the shoulder, eyes crinkling with his smile. “Yeah, brah, it worked.”

Danny grinned back, feeling giddy. “It worked.”

He didn’t have to be anywhere near his partner now, but of course the first thing he did was pull Steve into a crushing hug. And Steve hugged just as tightly back.

***

Danny went home. Finally, _finally_ , he went home. He heated up frozen lasagne and ate it sitting on the couch in his boxers, watching whatever baseball game he could find without having to listen to Steve bitch about how football was better. He showered for a full half hour and only thought about the fact that Steve’s water pressure was better once. He lay down right in the middle of his bed and relished the feeling of his own mattress, his own pillows, his own better-than-Steve’s-shitty-quality sheets. He smiled at the silence of the house, the absence of any other person within his space, and closed his eyes.

And then he couldn’t sleep.

A whole two hours he tossed and turned before giving up with a groan. It wasn’t the first time Danny had ever struggled to sleep; insomnia was an old and familiar friend of his. But this wasn’t that. This was so much more annoying than that.

“Goddamned Steve McGarrett,” Danny grumbled under his breath. “Goddamned stupid fucking magic.”

He didn’t look at the clothes he pulled on; didn’t care whether they matched or not. All that mattered was that he had his keys and his phone—that was important, better not forget that—and the front door was locked behind him. It was late, hardly any traffic on the streets, and it took much less time than it usually would to get to 2727 Piikoi Street. 

It took a lot longer to actually get out of the car and march up the footpath to knock on the door. When it opened, Steve looked surprised and then quickly concerned when he realised who it was waking him up.

“Danny? What’s wrong?”

“I hate you so much.”

“Excuse me?”

Danny pushed his way inside without waiting for an invitation. “So the funny thing is, I was so excited to be back in my own place, right? Spend the evening without anyone else around, shower for half an hour without judgement, go to sleep in my lovely big bed all by myself. I’ve been dreaming about it all week.”

Steve made a face; a face that said something like _I know exactly what you’ve been dreaming about and it hasn’t been beds._ “So why are you back here?”

“That’s the funny bit. I was lying in my lovely, empty bed and I couldn’t fucking sleep because it was _too_ empty.”

Steve’s face was instantly transformed with his grin. “You saying you missed me?”

“No,” Danny shot back immediately, even though he kind of (definitely) was.

Steve didn’t stop grinning. “Well I know you didn’t miss my bed.”

He was right about that. Danny couldn’t believe he was back here, actually wanting to sleep on that rock of a mattress. 

Honestly, the things he did for his partner.

“Shut up,” he grumbled. 

And then he didn’t have anything else smart to say so he just used his actions and leaned up to kiss Steve instead. Steve made a surprised noise, but he was quick to kiss back. 

“Danny?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Just thought I should tell you that I want this.”

Danny had to kiss him again for that, so he did. “Good,” he said when they pulled apart. “Because I want this too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading :) If you enjoyed the fic, I would love to know what you thought.
> 
> Also make sure you check out the rest of the collection because there are some awesome stories this year!


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